


The End of the Line

by LemonadeGarden



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Angst, DC Comics Rebirth, F/M, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 23:24:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15695481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemonadeGarden/pseuds/LemonadeGarden
Summary: Selina Kyle is a survivor. It's what she's good at, and she knows that sometimes to survive, other people have to get left behind.And then one day, Bruce Wayne comes along and proves her wrong.





	The End of the Line

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone's been doing post-batman #50 wedding fix-it fics, so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon too, haha  
> Enjoy!

As long as Selina Kyle remembered, there had always been a homeless man begging at the corner of Baker and Lincoln Street, blind as, well– blind as a  _ Bat. _

Everyday, as Selina walked home from school to the orphanage with Maggie, she'd see him sitting at that very same corner, in that very same position. A half-slouch, and a blank-eyed look on his face. An empty tin can in front of him. He always wore the same beat-up looking blue windbreaker, even when it wasn't raining. He had these deep-set milky white eyes, and an impressive salt and pepper beard. As Selina went from middle school to high school, the salt in his beard grew more noticeably pronounced than the pepper. But other than that, he appeared not to age at all. Or in fact, to move. 

“Maybe he's paralysed from the neck down,” Maggie would whisper to her as they walked by him, “Maybe he was a rich man before, and then he got into a big car accident, and that's how come he can't see, or move.”

Selina would scoff. Even at fifteen, she'd been cynical.

“He's just old,” she'd say. “And it's cold. He's preserving body heat.” 

And it  _ was _ cold. It was March, and the dregs of Winter stubbornly refused to leave Gotham, keeping his arms around her like a possessive lover. There had been snow just day before yesterday, but that man was still here. He had a blanket. Same old blue windbreaker. Same old white milky eyes. 

Maggie was scared of him, mostly because of his eyes. She thought that if she got too close, he'd kidnap her and kill her. Maggie was paranoid like that. 

“It's just cataracts,” Selina told her, but Maggie always picked up her pace when they had to walk by him. Still, her childlike curiosity took over by the time they reached the end of the block, and then she'd start asking Selina all sorts of questions. 

“Why d’you think he wears that blue jacket all the time?” She'd say, bobbing up and down excitedly.

“I don't know,” Selina would say tiredly, “Maybe he just likes it.”

She didn't have the heart to tell Maggie that it was probably the only jacket he owned. She was only ten. Ten year old girls were supposed to be shielded from the knowledge of such things. 

“Why’d you think he never shaves his beard?” Maggie was saying, her voice full of interest.

“Maybe it keeps him warm,” Selina would say, looking at her wristwatch. If they were late again, sister Elizabeth would make her do the dishes, instead of letting her go to the rec room and watching MTV with Holly. 

“Why's his can always empty?” Maggie would say, plaintively. 

Selina looked at Maggie. Here was a ten year old girl too afraid to walk by a blind man without clutching onto her sister's hand tight, but still concerned enough about him to worry that no one was giving him any money. 

Selina however, had no such sympathy. “He knows what part of the city this is,” she said, as they walked by the derelict buildings and crumbling roads, “we're  _ all _ poor, Maggie. No one has anything to spare. If he wants to make some cash he should just go uptown, or to– I don't know– Wayne manor, or something. I'm sure they'll feel bad for him there. But here? We're all one bad day away from becoming him.” 

Selina had realised very early on that there was only one thing greased the rusty, dirt-caked cogs of the world that she lived in. Self-preservation. You took care of yourself before you looked around to see if anyone else needed help. 

She assumed everyone around her knew this too, and so when Maggie dropped all of the money she had in the world into the blind man's tin can the next day, she was suitably pissed off.

“What did you do that for?” She hissed, as she walked away from him, striding down Lincoln Street. “That was all your Christmas cash.”

Maggie half-ran, half-jogged alongside Selina, struggling to keep up with her. “But I did a good thing!” She said, panting. 

“What you  _ did _ was a stupid thing,” Selina pointed out, “and now you won't be able to buy yourself that new dress that you wanted.”

“Carla from 4C already bought that dress,” Maggie said, shrugging, “and now I can't buy it too. It'll look like I'm copying her.”

“That’s not the point,” Selina said. She didn't exactly know why she was this furious, “you could have done something else with the money. No one's going to give you any more, you know.”

Maggie shrugged. “He needed it more,” she said. 

Selina spared her a sideways glance, and she felt some of the frozen anger in her melt. She sighed. 

“You can't just go around giving away all your money to people, Maggie,” she said, “No one returns that favour. This is the real world. It's cruel and unfair and ugly. Remember that.”

Maggie just shrugged again. “I didn't really need a dress anyway.”

Selina sighed. Her words were going right over her sister's head. 

Or at least, that's what she thought back then. 

 

*

 

Almost a decade later, she was curled up in Bruce Wayne's bedroom in the early hours of the morning, wearing nothing but his shirt and a smile. 

“What do you mean I shouldn't drop you home?” He was saying sleepily, running a hand through her hair. He liked doing that. It had still been long, back then. 

“I'm just saying, it's not safe for someone like you,” she whispered. They were under his large blanket, and the sheets were the softest things she'd ever laid on. Possibly also the most expensive. 

This, reflected Selina, had been a good idea. 

“What does  _ that _ mean,” he said, sounding more than a little offended. Selina bit back her smile. She sidled closer to him, until the side of her face was against his cheek, and she kissed him under his ear. It was prickly. He had morning stubble. 

“Well,” she said, “Rich guy like you, driving around his Bentley in the East end? You're going to get mugged, sweetheart.”

She kept kissing the side of his face. Bruce seemed unphased. Well. Mostly unphased. He was tilting his head to give her more access just the slightest bit. She smiled against his neck. 

“It wouldn't be right,” he insisted, although he still sounded half-asleep, “letting you leave alone like this. Do you  _ have _ to go?” he said. 

“My my,” Selina murmured, grazing the other side of his stubbled face with light fingers, “how chivalrous of you. And I do have to go. I have work tomorrow.” 

She was robbing the new art gallery uptown. They had a new exhibit, called 'Precious stones from the Elizabethan era’. Selina had always liked the idea of wearing a crown.

“At the pet shop?” He asked.

“Mmm,” she said, thinking of the diamonds. She rolled on top of him, and his arms came around her waist. 

“Maybe you could convince me to stay for a while,” she breathed into his ear. 

Bruce didn't say anything in reply. Actually, there was no talking for quite a while after that. 

 

“We'll take a taxi,” Bruce said, his fingers brushing her shoulders as he pulled the shirt off of her. 

Selina snorted, pulling her dress back on. “There’s no taxi that’ll go to the East end. Definitely not where I live.”

There was an odd expression on Bruce's face. Something a lot like curiosity.

“It's really that rough?” He said. 

Selina shook her head. He spoke exactly like a man who lived in a big mansion on the edge of the city, where he couldn't see the poor people and how they lived. It was a shame he was so good in bed, or she'd have robbed him blind a long time ago. She usually couldn't stand his type. Usually. 

It was just the way he looked, sitting on the bed and buttoning up his shirt, his hair all mussed and his jaw rough with stubble. It was way his voice sounded, like honey over gravel. Rich and sandpaper-y.

“Yes,” she said, slipping her heels on, “it's really that rough.” 

“How will you get home, then?”

She checked her wristwatch. “It's early enough that the metro's open. I'll take a train and then I'll walk a little.”

“In your heels?”

She sauntered up to him, pulling him in for one last kiss. He was still taller than her when she wore her heels, but not by much. “I can run in these things, you know,” she whispered into his ear. 

“Hnn,” he said, his breath warming her neck. 

“Well, then,” she said, pulling back, “bye, Bruce. Call me sometime when Dick's in school, okay?” 

She started for the door, picking her handbag up from the floor, where she'd dropped it the last night. 

“Selina, wait,” he said. 

She turned. 

“I'll come with you,” he said. 

Selina raised an eyebrow. “Bruce Wayne's going to take public transport?”

Bruce frowned, a small notch in between his brows, “I've done it before,” he said. 

Selina laughed. “Darling,” she said, “do you even know the way?”

Another frown. “I'm sure I can figure it out,” he said. “It's not rocket science.”

Selina smiled. “No, it isn't, at that.”

 

She let him come along with her, because seeing him figure out how to do normal things like buy train tickets and ask the help desk which stop to get off at in order to get to her neighbourhood amused her endlessly.

“You could at least have helped me,” he said, once they were in the right train at last.

Selina’s mouth quirked up by its own accord. That seemed to be happening a lot around him a lot, lately. “But what would the fun in that be?” 

The metro car was empty; it was one of the first trains of the day. Gotham's metro system hadn't been planned along with the rest of the city, and when the city council decided there was a need for it, there wasn't any place to stick it underground. They built it on top of the city instead, a patchwork system of bridges and rails and trains that were always late. Still, at least the view was interesting.

Through one of the plexiglass windows, Selina could see the first pink streaks of dawn in the sky. They sat next to each other, watching as the gray, dull buildings of Gotham sped past. As they got closer to their destination, the buildings started to look worse, with cracks in the concrete of the building walls, and crumbling bridges and tunnels. Streetlights with their bulbs broken, trash and plastic bags on the sides of the roads. 

One of the leather seats had a tear in it, the gaping hole showing off its innards. It looked like a rat had gnawed through it. 

She would take the metro with Maggie a lot. Once, someone had stolen her pencil box in the train. A ten year old girl's fucking pencil box.

“I hate this city,” she said, suddenly. Quietly. Bruce looked at her.

“It's an acquired taste,” he said. 

She laughed. “I've lived here twenty four years, sweetheart. Trust me, there's no taste to be acquired.”

The train grinded to a halt, stopping at the Bowery. They were still six stops away. Bruce lived a long, long way from her apartment. The East End was the end of the line. The last, inevitable stop. The people that had built the metro had tacked it on at the very end, like they'd much rather have forgotten about it. 

“I think Batman might turn the city around,” Bruce said. He was looking at her, like he was trying to gauge her reaction. 

Selina shook her head. “Batman's just a passing fad. Eventually, he's going to realise it's all hopeless and hang up his cape and go about his normal life again.”

Bruce was quiet for a moment. “You really think that?”

“That he's going to hang up his cape?”

“That it's all hopeless.”

Selina shrugged. “Isn't it?” She said. 

 

As they walked towards Selina’s apartment, Bruce linked their hands together. She looked at him.

“You're a local,” he said, grinning, “if they see me with you they won't try to kill me,” he said.

Selina smirked. “Don't worry, darling. I'll keep you safe from the big, bad men.” 

“My hero,” Bruce said, and he wasn't even being particularly sardonic. What a sap.  

They walked past the old park that Maggie and her friends used to play in, and the movie theater were Selina had gone on her first date. She'd lived all her life in these twenty square blocks.

“And I suppose you just love Gotham,” Selina said. 

Bruce for silent for a moment. Then, “Yes,” he said softly. 

Selina shook her head. “You love the manor, and Wayne tower, and going to parties at the mayor’s mansion. Wining and dining with other rich people. The rest of Gotham is very different.”

“I  _ know _ that, Selina. I may be rich, but I'm not naive.” 

_ Aren't you, _ Selina wanted to say, but she'd probably piss him off and then he'd leave. Besides, Selina was starting to get used to that hand wrapped around hers. 

“Alright, Bruce,” she said, “tell me what you like about it, then. One thing.” She didn't know why she felt like she had to prove a point. She usually confined herself to having intellectual debates with Batman. 

Bruce Wayne was for dancing and drinking and having a good time. 

“I like the people,” Bruce said, and Selina snorted. 

“The same people that murdered your parents? Those people?” She said. 

Bruce looked at her sharply. “There's always exceptions.” He said.

“What do you like about the people? Everyone steals and lies and cheats, and we certainly don't like to lend a helping hand to those in need.”

They passed by the corner shop where Selina had bought her first cigarettes. She had been fourteen. 

“I think you're wrong,” Bruce said, softly. “People help each other. They do good things. All anyone can see is the minority that doesn't. They're the loudest voices.”

Selina looked at him. Bruce looked calm. Unruffled. Like he knew everything was right in this world. She shook her head. 

“Come with me,” she said, and she took a left from the corner shop, instead of going straight. 

Bruce followed her, still holding onto her hand. 

“Where are we going?” He asked. 

“Just to a guy I know,” she said. 

They walked until they reached the corner of Baker and Lincoln, and Selina stood and looked across the street at the frail old man sitting on the sidewalk with his blue windbreaker and his empty tin can. 

“You see?” She said. 

“What about him?” Bruce said. 

“I walked by the street everyday for almost twelve years, and I never saw money in his can. Except for one exception.”

“What was the exception?”

Selina frowned. “My sister. She gave him all her saved up money, once.”

“That was nice of her,” Bruce said.

She shrugged. A stray cat slunk by them, the tip of its tail flicking lazily when Selina bent down to scratch behind its ears. 

Bruce watched her. “I didn't know you had a sister,” he said, finally. 

She shrugged again. She'd shared too much. 

“She wasn't like everyone else,” she said, finally, “She was different.”

“So everyone other than your sister is a bad person?” Bruce said, looking amused. 

She looked at the man sitting on the sidewalk. “Not bad. Just– selfish. It's the way we have to be, to survive. And eventually, people get used to being selfish. They stop doing it just to survive, and they start doing it just because they can.”

Bruce had his free hand in his jeans pocket. There was an inscrutable look on his face. 

“Someone's going to prove to you someday that you're wrong,” he said. 

“That's uncharacteristically optimistic of you,” Selina said.

Bruce smiled, just a little bit. He rarely ever smiled for real, and it was always wonderful to catch him when he did. He had a beautiful smile. “Maybe so,” he said. “I'm going to go drop five hundred bucks in his can.”

“What?” Selina said, but he was already walking towards him. She watched as he took his wallet out, and took out the money. He grinned at her. 

“Idiot,” she whispered. It was hard not to smile.

 

“If you just give out money to every poor person you see, keep in mind that I live in a tiny fourth floor walk-up apartment in a rough neighborhood. I need the charity too,” Selina said. They were walking back towards her flat. Bruce smiled again. 

“There's two exceptions now,” he said. He was holding her hand, still. “Your sister and I.”

“That kind of money was chump change for you,” Selina pointed out. “Maggie gave him all the money she had in the world. Twenty dollars. And besides, you gave it to him to prove a point to me. She gave him the money because she  _ wanted _ to. There's a difference there.”

“So your sister's name is Maggie,” Bruce said. 

Selina rolled her eyes. “That's beside the point.” She said. 

But Bruce was unflappable. “When can I meet her?” He said. 

“Oh god,” Selina said, laughing a little, “never.”

Bruce smiled, the dimple on the side of his cheek deepening. He really was a handsome man. “Now I have to see her. Next week? I could come over for lunch.”

“Over my dead body, Wayne,” Selina said.

“Someone who grew up with you as a role model? She can't be anything less than perfect.”

His tone was sarcastic, the bastard. 

Selina narrowed her eyes, taking her hand out of his. “I think,” she said, “I'll walk the rest of the way by myself.”

Bruce laughed as she started to stride off, walking after her. “But Selina,” he said, “who's going to protect me from all the goons and thugs?”

“At this point I'm seriously considering siccing them on you,” Selina called out as she picked up the pace.

Bruce laughed some more, and then spent the rest of the morning making up for his words. 

Selina forgot all about the gray buildings, and the torn train seats, and the unseeing eyes of the man sitting on the sidewalk. Her vision was focused on her and the man beside her. Alone in the world, if only for a moment. 

It was okay to be selfish, sometimes. 

 

*

 

Another decade went by. 

She woke up in the cold, gray light of the morning, sitting up in bed. She looked, even though she knew what she was going to see. She always looked. 

The other side of the bed was empty.

She wiped at her face. She hadn't been sleeping very well. 

She made her way over towards the bathroom, and looked at herself in the mirror. She frowned, looking at her eyes. 

She looked like she'd been crying. That was no good. 

Desmond expected a fresh face. 

She showered, and then put on about four layers of concealer. She wore one of the dresses she hadn't taken to the manor after she'd moved there, and started assembling her kit. A coffee from the diner downstairs, and a bagel, and she was done. She looked about as good as she'd ever look, and she had her kit ready.

She couldn't quite stomach the bagel, and only ate half of it, and maybe she stared at the water swirling down the shower drain for too long, but that was besides the point. Externally, she looked fine. Put together. 

Like it had never even happened. 

At the luncheon, Desmond was all smarmy grins and slicked back hair, and he stared down the front of her dress too many times for her liking. Still, he was easy money, so she put up with it.

“Do you play lawn tennis?” He asked her. He asked her that a lot, and he always forgot her answer. Desmond was obsessed with lawn tennis.

Selina smiled at him, fingering the lapel of his shirt casually. “I know my way around the court. Why do you ask?” 

Desmond grinned toothily at her. “A friend of mine invited me to the Waterstone club on Sunday. Perhaps you'd like to join me,” he said. 

God, he was bragging again. The Waterstone was an old, exclusive club that socialites would do anything short of murder to get memberships to. It was old and exclusive enough that you just knew they'd kicked people who looked like Selina out of their pools at some point in the sixties and the seventies. 

Bruce was a member. They'd probably given him an honorary membership card the moment he crawled out of his mother's womb, the sycophants. He never set foot in the place. 

“Selina, are you listening?” Desmond said, and Selina raised her eyebrows. 

“Hm?” She said. She had to stop tuning out of conversations like that. Or thinking about him. 

“I was saying,” Desmond said, a little haughtily, “that the tenderloin is lovely, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Selina said, “lovely.” It was turning her stomach. 

She rose quickly, pressing a kiss to Desmond's cheek. It reeked of expensive  aftershave. 

“Excuse me,” she said, “I have to go use the ladies’ room. You won't be too lonely here all by yourself, will you?”

“I guess I’ll survive,” Desmond said pouting like a baby, and Selina was seized by the strong, sudden urge to slap him. 

“Good,” she said, smiling. It probably looked more like she was baring her teeth at him. She turned on her heel, and strode out of the hall. 

In the bathroom, she slumped against the marble counter, gulping harsh breaths of air. Her dress felt too tight on her. She closed her eyes. 

_ You have made a terrible mistake _ , a small, traitorous voice inside her head was saying,  _ and now you're paying for it.  _

She shook her head, wiping at her mouth. She was fine. Everything was fine. 

Except it wasn't. She couldn't put up with any more men like Desmond. They made her skin crawl. And she didn't want to go back to robbing museums at night, because she was afraid she'd run into  _ him _ . And she didn't want to know what he'd do, then. What he'd say. 

Bruce hadn't called. It had been a month, and he hadn't called once. He probably hated her, now. She would, too. 

_ Terrible mistake, _ the voice screamed. 

“Shut up,” she rasped to herself in the mirror. There was an ache in her whole body, like she was slowly bleeding out. A dull, old ache.  

When she got out of the bathroom, she told Desmond she wasn't feeling very well. 

“Oh,” he said, looking disappointed, “do you want to go back home?”

“You know what,” Selina said, a little desperately. She would do just about anything to get that voice out of her head at this point, “let's go back to your place instead.”

Desmond's face lit up. “I'll tell the driver to bring the car around,” he said. 

Bruce had always known the drivers’ names. 

 

They fucked in his stupid post-modernist looking penthouse suite. All Selina could think while he panted and grunted above her in the bed, was how abominable the interior designing was. It was all muted grays and olives, like he'd seen it in some catalogue and decided it was the kind of thing rich people went for. She really fucking hated New Money. 

After he was asleep, she left the bedroom, pulling her dress back on. She took her kit out of her purse, and went to the safe that he kept behind that godawful, overpriced Gerhard Richter in his living room. 

It wasn't hard to crack it, although it took her longer than she'd expected. She was getting rusty. 

The safe had two necklaces, and fifty thousand in cash. One of the necklaces was a ruby and amethyst set. Selina looked at it, and then stuck in her purse. Small change. The other one was more impressive. A hundred and twelve carat yellow diamond pendant Desmond's mother had got cut and polished in the early seventies. About as big as a robin's egg. She frowned at it. It was the colour of piss. His mother had to be the most tasteless woman to walk this earth. 

Still, it would make her a big buck. 

She put it in her kit, grabbed about as much money as would fit in her tote bag, and got the hell out of Desmond's trashy apartment. 

 

She took the metro home. Even though she had money now, old habits died hard.

It was crowded, and when she finally got a seat, there was a little girl sitting next to her. She couldn't have been more than ten years old, and had two little pigtails, with ribbons tied around them. She was watching her curiously. 

Selina looked at her. “What,” she said. She didn't particularly like children. 

Bruce's kids had been different, though. 

The little girl blushed when she realized she'd been caught. 

“I like your hair,” she said, shrugging, “it's pretty.”

“Oh,” Selina said, touching the nape of her neck, where the longest strands grazed against her fingers, “thank you.”

The girl nodded primly. 

The metro lurched to a halt, and there was a flow of people going in and out of the train car. 

“I've never seen a girl with hair that short,” the girl said shyly, “it looks good.”

Selina looked at her. Hair ribbons in her hair, and a school uniform. Selina recognised the uniform. It was the Catholic school she and Maggie had gone too, years ago.

“You go to St. Mary's?” She asked.

The girl nodded.

“I used to go there,” Selina said, surprised. “I thought they'd shut it down. After the fire at the orphanage.”

“The day school is still open,” the girl said. 

A memory came to her mind all of a sudden, and Selina smiled. “Sister Agatha still around?” 

The girl shook her head, a blank expression on her face. 

“Oh,” Selina said. “She used to give us candy, sometimes. When we were good.”

“Oh,” The girl said. “Cool.”

“Yeah,” Selina said. She tapped her fingers against her tote bag. The metro hurtled on, over Gotham. Graying buildings and clogged roads. Still the same after ten years. Still the same as it had been when his hand had been wrapped around hers. 

She closed her eyes. She couldn't think about that right now, or she'd fall apart, right here in front of everyone. 

“Where's your mom?” She said instead, looking at the girl.

“At work,” the girl said, “she's a nurse.”

“You go home by yourself?”

“I manage fine,” The girl said, and with such authority that it made Selina smile. 

“My sister and I'd go all the way from Newtown to East end alone. We started when I was twelve and she was seven.”

“My brother's too small for the school. He's still only three.” The girl said. “And I go to the East end too.”

“Really?” Selina said, “where?”

“Upper side. Baker and eighty first.” 

The metro stopped again. End of the line.

“That's us, I guess,” the girl said, getting up. She picked up her bag off the floor. She had dark hair, like Selina. Like Maggie.

“Hey, do you have a pencil box on you?” Selina asked suddenly. 

“Yeah. Why?”

“No reason. Tell you what,” Selina said, as they got off the train, “let me walk you home.”

The girl looked up at her. “I manage–”

“You manage fine, I know. But it would–” Selina paused, “I'm having a bad day, and it would make me feel better, okay? You don't have to say yes.”

The girl hesitated. “You're not going to kidnap me or anything, are you?” She said. 

“No,” Selina smiled, “I promise.”

Another pause. “Okay, I guess.” 

“Okay.”

They walked out of the metro station, and onto the street. 

“I'm Selina, by the way.”

“Sarah.” 

“Nice to meet you, Sarah.”

“Same.” 

They made their way across the street, and onto the pavement on the other end. It was late afternoon, and the sun was directly overhead. They started walking towards Lincoln and Baker. 

“Do you like school?” Selina asked. 

Sarah scrunched up her nose. “Not really,” she said. Selina laughed. 

“Yeah, kid. I never did either.”

“I like gym period,” Sarah said, hopping over every other cobblestone, “and art.”

“I know a little boy who likes art. He's a bit older than you.”

“Your son?” Sarah asked.

Selina shook her head, laughing still. “Oh, god no. Do I look old enough to be a mother?”

Sarah looked at her, scrutinising. “You're what, forty five?”

Selina raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?” She said. 

Sarah grinned. “I'm kidding with ya. You look like my mom's age. Thirty five, maybe,” a sly look, “or forty.”

“Watch it, buddy. You're already on thin ice,” Selina said.

Sarah giggled. 

They walked down Lincoln Street, past the old park that Maggie and Selina used to go to when they were still toddlers, and then the pet shop where Selina used to work. It had been shut down a long time ago. 

Then, something very strange happened. Something Selina had only seen happen twice before. 

As they passed by the homeless man on the corner of the block, Sarah reached into her pocket and dropped a dollar into his can. 

“Have a good day,” the man said.

“Thanks!” Sarah grinned. 

Selina stared as they walked past. “What was that?” She said. 

“What?”

“You just– you just gave him money,” Selina said. 

Sarah blinked. “Yeah,” she said, “so? That's Old Jim. I give him some loose change everyday. My and my mom. And a couple of our neighbors. Ever since we saw him help Batman catch some guy.”

“What?” Selina says, her mouth feeling dry. 

Sarah grinned. “So this guy was running down the street with a bag of money, and Batman was right on his tail, right? And then Old Jim just took his cane and stuck it in front of the guy and the guy tripped on his face and fell and it was so awesome. And I saw it, too. I was out with my mom. Batman totally nodded at us and everything. And he thanked old Jim.”

Selina had stopped walking. Her preconception of the whole goddamned world was shifting before her. 

When she'd left Bruce, she'd written him a letter. She's left it on the bed for him, before she'd left the manor.

_You can't be happy,_ she said, _because then you'll stop being Batman. And Gotham needs Batman. Gotham needs Batman like an infested farm needs pesticides._

Maybe Gotham needed Batman less than she thought. Or needed him in a different way. 

Bruce had been right all along. 

“But his can,” she said, numbly, “It's always empty.”

“Oh yeah,” Sarah shrugged, “he gives away the money he doesn't need to the women's clinic over at Mercy and eighty third. Goes there every evening. It's not a lot, but it's good money. Like, fifty bucks? That's why my mom always gives him the change. Did I tell you she's a nurse? She works there, at the–”

“I'm terribly sorry,” Selina said, “but will you be able to go the rest of the way home without me? I just remembered that I had to go somewhere.”

“Yeah, I told you, I manage fine.” Sarah was staring at her, frowning. “Are you okay? You're looking kind of pale.”

“I'm fine,” Selina said. She hesitated. “Listen, do you need any money?”

“What?”

Selina started to open her tote bag. “I have money. A lot of it. And I don't really need it.” She said, taking out the bundles of hundreds. 

Sarah’s eyes went wide. “Woah,” she said, looking around. “You can't walk around the place with that kind of cash on you.”

“I know,” Selina said, “keep it in your backpack, okay? Give it to your mom. Don't buy anything stupid with it. And tell her to give some to that women's clinic.”

“I– I can't take this,” Sarah said. Her eyes were still wide, even though Selina was rapidly transferring the tote’s contents into her school bag. 

“Sure you can,” Selina said, “it's not mine anyway. Now run along home.” 

“What the fuck,” Sarah said, her voice high. 

“No swearing,” Selina said. Bruce was starting to rub off on her. She zipped up the schoolbag. “Now go home.”

Sarah started walking fast, like she was afraid Selina was going to change her mind. “Thanks!” She yelled, breaking into a run. Selina nodded.

Then she went and walked over to Old Jim. For all the bemoaning of the lack of compassion and selfishness of Gotham's people, she realised that she'd never given him any money either. She was as bad as everyone. 

Worse, judging from what Sarah had told her. 

She took out the diamond pendant from her bag, and dropped it into his can, where it made a heavy  _ clunk _ sound.

The man looked up at her, his gaze milky white. “Have a good day,” he said. He probably thought she'd dropped some change in there. He'd be in for a surprise in the evening, when he went over to that Clinic on Mercy and eighty third. 

“I'm planning on it,” Selina said, firmly. 

 

*

 

She broke into the batcave while the night was still young, slipping in through the old tunnels that Bruce had abandoned years ago because of water logging. It wasn't that she  _ wanted _ to break in, it was just that he’d probably changed all the door codes so she couldn't come in anymore. 

And she doubted that Alfred would let her in through the front door.

He was sitting at the computer consoles when she walked in, his cowl pushed back. He hadn't seen her yet.

His hair was a little longer than it had been when she'd seen him last, and it was all mussed up from wearing the cowl. There was a little notch in his brow as he looked at the screens. It took her breath away for a moment, how beautiful he was. 

“Bruce,” she said quietly. 

Bruce turned around. The notch deepened. 

“Before you say anything,” Selina said, “I just wanted to tell you that I know that nothing I can possibly say will ever make up for what I did. I know that.”

“Good,” Bruce said, and Selina felt the blow of that right in the middle of her chest. 

“I don't– I thought– I was wrong, Bruce,” Selina said, and she was whispering even though she and Bruce were almost fifteen feet apart on opposite sides of the room. It felt like an endless chasm of distance. “I fucked up.”

“Yes, you did.” Bruce said, and he wasn't even looking at her. He was going through some files on his worktable. His face was remote. Indifferent. Somehow that was even worse than the anger that she had been expecting.

“I don't know what to say,” Selina whispered. “I'm so sorry.”

He looked up from his files. “Why are you here?” He asked, brusquely. 

“I– what?” 

“You're here because you want something. Isn't that why you always come here, because you want something? What is it?” he said. The anger was there, all right. It was there, a steady, building rage, thrumming in his voice. In the hard line of his jaw.

“I'm here because I wanted to make things right,” Selina said, quietly, “And to ask you to forgive me.”

She avoided his eyes. It was a monumental task, what she was asking of him. She felt the frozen silence in the vast chasm between them. She could cross it so easily, if she tried. Just walk across the room and put her arms around him. She risked a glance up at him. 

Bruce was looking at her with an abstracted expression on his face. No, he was looking  _ through _ her, at the wall behind her. Like she wasn't there at all. 

“You want me to  _ forgive _ you,” he said, slowly. 

Selina looked down. It was hard to speak, through the lump constricting her throat. 

When she was younger, much younger, she'd get into these fights with Holly all the time, and they'd wrestle and scratch and pull each others’ hair and cry, until one of the nuns had to pull them apart. Then Selina would have to apologize, because she was supposed to be older and smarter than this, the nuns would say reprovingly. 

Except Holly never accepted a single one of her apologies. She just stared at her, dead-eyed and hurt, clutching at her wounds. 

“Get out,” Bruce said, softly. That's how he was looking at her now. Dead eyes and somewhere deep underneath that– hurt. The thrum of anger in his voice was still very much present. 

“Sweetheart, please–”

“Get out of my fucking house,” Bruce said again, his voice just as soft. Somehow Selina would have felt better if he was yelling at her. 

She left. 

 

*

 

In the days to follow, Selina came up with a plan. It was stupid as hell and was probably never going to work, but she'd known Bruce for twelve years, and nothing softened him up more than finding out that Selina was doing good, philanthropic things for people, or some bullshit along those lines. 

She took paintings off the wall, and jewellery out of the safe and her closets. The wall safe behind the dresser had sixteen bars of gold that she'd been saving for a rainy day, and she took it all out and set it on the table. Same for the half a million in cash under her floorboards. Another hundred thousand in her savings account. The Degas in her bedroom. Fifteen gold doubloons she'd acquired in a deal she’d made with Penguin once. The large Jackson Pollock in her guest bedroom. The two feet tall Egyptian cat statues that she'd stolen from the Gotham Metropolitan when she'd been drunk and thought it would have been funny. Even Isis’ collar had a small diamond on it that she'd stolen from a socialite ten years ago. 

“Sorry darling,” she said to Isis, taking the collar off, “but I'm going to need that.”

Isis looked at her resentfully. 

Then she went to her dresser, reached all the way to the back of the drawer, and took out the little ring box she'd kept there. 

She opened it, and looked at the diamond ring sitting inside. Square cut, platinum band. On sunlit days, when it used to be on her finger, it used to  _ twinkle. _

Beautiful. 

She put the ring box back in the dresser. She couldn't sell this one. 

She put all the bounty she'd acquired over the years on the table, to look at all of it one last time. She'd sold most of what she'd stolen, but these had been her favourites. It would be sad to see them go. She set down the ruby set she'd stolen from Desmond on the table next to the bars of gold. 

The Jackson Pollock was too big for the table, so she set it down on the carpet. Fuck, even the carpet was an old hand-woven Armenian piece she'd stolen from an auction house. 

She sighed. She really liked the carpet. 

_ If you hadn't been such an idiot, _ the voice in her head said,  _ you'd have been able to keep it. _

Oh, well. 

She took her phone out, and started calling charities. 

 

*

 

Bruce showed up at her apartment three days later. 

She was sleeping, and the sound of the doorbell woke her up. She rose slowly, rubbing at her eyes. It was the middle of the night. 

The doorbell rang again, insistently.

“I'm coming,” she called out, pulling on her robe.

She opened the door, and there he was. 

She froze. She hadn't planned for anything after the part where she'd try to get him to pay attention. She found that now, staring at him standing at the doorway, she couldn't think of anything to say. She was actually still half asleep.

Any moment now, she'd say something. Something smart and funny and eloquent,  and it would get Bruce to fall in love with her again. 

Instead, he was the one to break the silence. 

“You hurt me,” he said, and suddenly she was wide awake. His voice sounded raw. Like he had fallen into the habit of not using it. “What you did, it hurt me. I want you to know that.”

“I do,” she said, shakily, “I– would you like to come in,” she asked, holding the door open. 

Bruce walked into her apartment. He was wearing an old t-shirt that she'd seen him wear a million times before, and faded jeans. He needed a shave. And a haircut. There were dark circles under his eyes. He hadn't been taking care of himself. 

He looked around her bare apartment. She'd sold the fucking table too. It was an antique English oak piece, and it was responsible for St. Mary's orphanage’s brand new playground and gymnasium. 

“You've lost weight,” he said. 

Selina looked down at herself. She hadn't really noticed. 

“It's Alfred,” she said, smiling weakly, “he spoiled normal food for me.”

Bruce didn't say anything. He went and sat down on her sofa.  

“Did you really think that giving away money would make me come running back to you?” He said, and okay, so maybe he was still angry.

“No,” she said, swallowing, “but it made headlines, didn't it? All those anonymous donations. I thought it'd get your attention. And I wanted you to hear me out.”

Bruce shook his head. He looked tired. “You were stupid, this time. You stole from a mark who knew your name. You know how many strings I had to pull to get Desmond Cattenach not to press charges?”

She stood where the table had once been. 

“Maybe I wanted to be put away again,” she said, after a while. There was nothing for her here anymore. Maggie was gone now. Had been, for years. And things with Holly had become– complicated. 

Everything had become so complicated. 

He was silent for a long moment. They both were. 

“Stay the night,” Selina said, all of a sudden, leaning against the wall, in what she hoped was a casual manner, “It’ll be fun. I’ll make breakfast in the morning.”

A month ago, Bruce would have said yes. Ten years ago, he'd have said yes. 

Now, there was only a silence.

“I should go,” he said. 

“Please don't,” Selina said, a little desperately. “Just– just stay for a while, okay? Let me make you some coffee. Just sit.”

“This was a mistake, Selina,” Bruce said, “I only came here to warn you to be more careful in situations involving people like Mr. Cattenach.”

“No, you didn't,” Selina said. 

Bruce frowned at her. “Excuse me?” He said. 

“No you didn't,” Selina said, firmly, “if you wanted to warn me, you could've called, or texted. You could have sent me a letter, for god's sake. But you came here, to my apartment. You wanted to see me, Bruce.”

Bruce was silent once again. She'd got him there. 

Then he looked up at her, his eyes hard and flinty. 

“You wanted to talk,” he said, “so do it. Talk.”

She sat down on the sofa next to him. They were close enough to touch. 

“I made a mistake,” she said, her voice low, “I underestimated Gotham. I underestimated you. And the kind of help you give to the people here.”

Bruce was looking at her, his face unreadable. Selina hadn't switched on the lights, and had it not been for the dim glow of the streetlights outside, they'd be swathed in the dark. 

She fidgeted with her hands. “Maybe you don't need to be– to be unhappy, to save this city. Maybe you don't need to be unhappy to be Batman at all. And maybe the city doesn't need nearly as much saving as I thought it did.”

Bruce was still silent. 

“You have to say something,” Selina said, hoping that her voice wasn't shaking. 

Bruce got off the sofa, away from her, and walked over to the window, an abstracted expression on his face.

“I have a question,” he said, finally.

“What is it?” 

“If I tell you I want to marry you, and then I give up being Batman, will you go away again?” He said. 

Selina hadn't even fucking heard the rest of the question. All she could hear were the words  _ I want to marry you,  _ playing again and again like a broken record in her head. Her whole body ached in joy and sunlight and bliss. There was still a  _ chance.  _

“Selina,” he said. 

Selina stood up. “No,” she said, and her voice was firm, this time. “I tried that, and it didn't work out so well for me.” 

“It didn't,” he said. She knew Bruce well enough that that was supposed to be a question.

She shook her head, walking towards him. They were both near the window now, close enough that their breaths were fogging against the glass, warm against her skin. 

“The first week was okay,” she whispered, “I drank a lot. It kept my mind off things. The two weeks after that I got sick. Couldn't keep any food down.” 

Bruce's face was right next to hers. How had they gotten this close? 

“That's how you lost the weight,” he said. 

“Yeah.”

“You should've called,” he said, roughly. “I would have taken care of you.”

“After I left you at the proverbial altar?” She smiled.

“Yes,” Bruce said, and he was dead serious. Selina shook her head. “That's the difference between the two of us,” she said,  “I'm selfish. And you're not. If you asked me to marry you again, I'd say yes, even if it was at the cost of Gotham losing Batman. Because I can't take it, anymore. Living without you. I'm too selfish.”

Bruce looked out the window again, at the streetlights and the empty roads. At Gotham. 

“I wouldn't ever give up being Batman,” Bruce was saying, and he was whispering too, “not for the world.”

“I know that now,” Selina said. She took the risk, bringing her hand up to the side of his face, her thumb against his cheekbone.

He closed his eyes. 

“If you could ever bring yourself to forgive me,” Selina whispered, “I’d spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”

Bruce opened his eyes, slowly. The pale blue of his gaze seemed to pierce through her. Wipe her clean. He reached up and held her hand, the one that was on the side of his face. She couldn't tell if it was because he wanted it off of him or if he just wanted to touch her. 

“I don't want that,” he said. 

“You don't want to forgive me?”

“I don't want you to spend all your life making it up to me.” 

“Well,” Selina said, smiling a small smile, “maybe just a couple of months, then.” 

“You slept with Desmond Cattenach,” Bruce said. 

The smile wiped itself from Selina’s face. “I wanted to forget about you,” she said. 

Bruce's hand was still around her wrist. He was stroking the side of it just the slightest bit, with the pad of his thumb. 

“Did it work,” he said, his voice barely audible. He was looking at her like no one had ever looked at her before.

Selina shook her head. Like that was even a question. “What do you think, Bruce,” she said, just as quiet as him. 

Bruce nodded. “Good,” he said, “good.” And then he was pulling her into his arms and was kissing her and kissing her, and she was kissing him back just as desperately, and he was pretty much holding her up completely because her knees seemed to have given out on her entirely.

“I missed you so much,” he breathed, in between kisses, “I couldn't stop thinking about you. Every hour of every day.”

“I couldn't either,” she rasped, clinging on to him, “God, I'm so sorry– I can't–” 

“Hush,” Bruce said, cutting her off to kiss her again, and it was the best, best day of her life, the best fucking moment, it was rearranging her beliefs about humanity and goodness, of everything that was sacred and holy in the world. Bruce was maneuvering them across the apartment to the bedroom somehow, the two of them moving like a strange, clumsy four-legged organism, but neither of them cared, neither of them cared about anything at all at that point, except for each other. When they finally got to the bedroom, and Bruce looked up, he blinked. 

“Where's your bed?” He said, looking at the bare room, with only a mattress on the floor.

Selina started to laugh, at the sheer irony and joy of it all. “Shit,” she said, “I forgot. I sold it, day before yesterday. Stole it from a Turkish ambassador’s home six years ago. It was an antique piece. Paid for sixty two children's Math textbooks at Gotham Public.”

“How do you even steal a bed?” Bruce asked, his voice still rough. Honey over gravel, she thought again. He was still very, very close to her, and one of his hands was quite low on her back. 

“Do you really want to talk about this now?” She asked. 

“No, not really,” Bruce said, and then they were making out like teenagers again, and they half-fell, half-landed on the mattress, and Bruce swore because he kind of got the brunt of Selina’s weight on him, and Selina was laughing again, between the kisses and the pure, concentrated knowledge in her middle that everything was going to be okay again. 

 

*

 

When she woke in the early hours of the morning, she reached over and felt instinctively to see if the bed was empty. It wasn't. She smiled. 

She slipped out of the room, into the bathroom, and looked at her face in the mirror. She looked tired. A good kind of tired, though. The kind of tired you looked after pulling off a big job at a museum, or an art gallery. 

She remembered waking up the morning after stealing that Degas. It had been an unbelievable fucking high, watching it sit on her coffee table as she drank her first coffee for the day. That was nothing compared to this, however, to watching Bruce sleep on his stomach on her mattress, the bedding kicked to the floor, his legs sprawled out. The slow rise and fall of his broad back as he breathed. An occasional sigh. 

She sat down cross-legged on the floor next to the mattress.

“Bruce,” she whispered. 

Bruce mumbled something unintelligible and turned over, away from her.

Selina smiled. She shook at his shoulder. “Bruce, sweetheart. You have to get up.”

“Hnnnm,” Bruce said. Grunted, more like. 

Selina bent down, resting her head on his back, her arms around his wide shoulders. He was so warm. She pressed in tighter.

“Alfred doesn't know where you are, does he? He's probably worried sick.” she said, softly. “I could call him for you, if you want, but I don't know how well he’d take that.”

Bruce squinted at her in the morning light. 

“I'll call him,” he husked, his voice sleep-rough. 

“Good,” Selina said, bending down once again to kiss his forehead. “I'll go make breakfast.”

“Come back here instead,” Bruce murmured, pulling her back to the mattress gently, and Selina wished she had even a fraction of willpower when it came to resisting his advances, because she didn't even hesitate. 

They lay in each others’ arms for a while. She pressed her face against the curve of his neck, where it was always the warmest, and smelled most like Bruce. Bruce made a sound, something sleepy and pleased, and wrapped his arms tighter around her. 

Selina had almost forgotten that Bruce liked to cuddle. It was something about mornings. He was always more laid-back. Possibly it was because he was still mostly asleep. 

She wondered what they'd do, now that she'd gotten her head out of her ass. Would she move back into the manor? 

Maybe they'd just drive to a courtroom and sign a few papers before either of them could change their minds again. She was pretty sure she was going to have a lot of explaining to do to his children. Not to mention Alfred. 

Alfred would be royally mad. 

Bruce was running an idle hand over her arm.

“Where's your ring?” He said, quietly. 

Selina went still. “In my dresser,” she said.

There was a silence. Bruce was still running his hand over her arm. Up to her shoulder, and then down to her hand, and then to that empty indent on her finger where her ring used to be. 

“Go get it,” Bruce said. 

Selina sat up. “Bruce, you don't have to–”

Bruce was smiling a little. He rarely ever did. It was a wonderful smile. “Go get it,” he said again.

Selina went and got it. She hadn't sold the dresser, thankfully. She reached back all the way until her hand touched the very back of the drawer. She found it right where she'd left it, a small and innocuous thing against the palm of her hand. 

She could feel Bruce's eyes on her back.

She went back to the mattress, and sat down. Bruce was sitting up now. 

“Give me your hand,” he said, taking the ring box from her. 

“Bruce,” Selina said. There was something in her throat that felt strangely tight. She gave him her hand.

Bruce opened the box, and took the ring out. “You kept it,” he said, very low, “all this time and you kept it.”

“Of course I kept it,” Selina said, “what was I going to do, give it back to you? A ring like that? Not a chance in hell.”

Bruce smiled a little ruefully. Her hand was in his, and he was doing that thing he did, where he stroked at it with the pad of his thumb. “You could have sold it. Thrown it away. I don't know.”

Selina tilted her head. “You think I could do those things,” she said. 

“Well,” Bruce said, “you've kept me guessing since the first day that I met you.”

Selina smiled. “I have, haven't I.”

Bruce shook his head. He put the ring back on her finger, and brought her hand up to his mouth, pressed a kiss to her wrist. 

“Keep it on, this time,” he murmured. 

Selina laughed, but it was going to become crying if she wasn't careful. That tight thing in her throat was most decidedly a lump. Bruce was pulling her back down onto the mattress, and then they were lying on the sheets again. 

She looked at the ring on her finger. In the soft morning light, it twinkled. Just like she'd remembered.

“Okay, Bruce,” she said, quietly, “okay.” 

They lay there for a while, in silence. Neither of them fell asleep, though. 

Bruce had a hand in her hair. He was stroking it, his fingers slowing down at the nape of her neck. 

“You cut it again,” Bruce said, after a while.

“It was growing too long,” she said.

Bruce kissed the edge of her temple, just grazing her hairline. 

“I like it,” he said.  

She stirred a little, to look up at Bruce. “There was this girl on the train. She told me she liked it too. That was what made me go to the cave, actually. The conversation I had with the girl.”

A slow hand in her hair. Selina closed her eyes. It felt good. It felt so, so good. 

“I'll write her a letter thanking her personally,” Bruce said. 

Selina smiled. “You do that. And call Alfred,” she said, getting out of bed, evading his attempts to pull her back in, “I'm making breakfast.”

Except she didn't go to the kitchen right away. She stopped by at the window, and looked outside at the strange, inscrutable city that she'd lived in all her life, that she'd fallen in love with somewhere along the ride, purely by accident, just like she'd fallen in love with Bruce. A city full of broken dreams and children in alleyways cradling their dead parents and little kids with pencil boxes in their bags and poor people who gave money away for no reason at all. The city that had taken everything from her, that had given her everything back, given back friends and enemies and a family, and above all, the man lying on her mattress, watching her.

“What are you looking at?” He asked. 

Selina looked away. “Nothing,” she said, smiling. She couldn't stop today, for some reason. “It's just a nice view.”

“It is, isn't it,” Bruce said, although he wasn't talking about the city, and Selina smiled again.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone, Thanks for reading! Just wanted to let you all know that I'm taking a break from writing for a couple of months to focus on school stuff.   
> You can always come find me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lemonadegarden), though. I need more batcat friends!


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